Swimming the channel is an incredible feat. 22 miles of rough sea, shipping lanes and jellyfish separate the English coastline from the French coastline. Currents, wind, and speed of swimmer can all dramatically effect the route each swimmer takes, and realistically, few swimmers will swim 22 miles. Most will swim more, as currents push them away from their desired path and add on many extra hours to their swim. Only a small group of people get to call themselves a channel swimmer, and apparently more people have climbed Mount Everest than have swum the channel.
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I am really not a runner. I'm sporty, I like the outdoors, and therefore everyone thinks I should be a good runner. I'm not. Me and running go as well together as alcohol and text messaging. Ok, I used to be an alright sprinter, but the furthest I ever ran back then was 200m. Its that other 4.8km that kills me.
I'm not really a huge fan of heights. Infact, the last time I did something like this was in New Zealand on my gap year where I got caught up in the adventure hype, decided to tick everything off my bucket list in one trip and signed up to bungy jump and sky dive the same week. I was probably the most willing person they've ever had to jump out of the plane on a tandem skydive, but that was based purely on a hatred of planes, and the thought of jumping out of it was better than the thought of staying in it. I try and claim the bungy jump was pretty epic, but if you fish out the dvd hidden safely in a drawer then it becomes quite clear that after the 5th time of being told to jump the guy just loses patience and pushes me off. So loud was my scream, it was picked up perfectly clearly by the cameras positioned across the gorge about 100m away.
So... what a better way to start off Challenge Twelve than a 127m (that's 418ft for you old schoolers) abseil down Northampton Lift Tower. Have I mentioned it also just happens to be the tallest permanent abseil structure IN THE WORLD?!? A few weeks ago I had what can only be described as a mid twenties crisis. I'd got all inspired reading blogs from people who had quit the rat race and taken on some amazing challenges, creating world records, breaking world records and visiting some amazing places in the process. I wasn't quite prepared to just quit my job and take off, but it started the cogs turning.
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